Another soul summoned
by tallgeese
Summary: Turbulent emotions fill Orihime as she departs for Hueco Mundo. When an accident leaves her in a certain mist-filled town, can she survive her own demons long enough to escape? Bleach-Silent hill crossover.


_Author's note: It's me again! I don't know how many recall my earlier works, but I've been out of the game for a while. To fans of my unfinished UlquiHime work, please know that I can finally get around to finishing it, hopefully, and in the meantime here's this. This is my first crossover work, and it combines the universes of Bleach and Silent Hill. I admit that I take a handful of liberties with the canon of the former, but mostly for the sake of easing the transition of the two very different stories. The psychological concept of Silent Hill always struck me as perfect for a character like Orihime Inoue, who is more tormented by her own feelings than by anyone else. Please let me know what you think._

**Chapter 1: Descent into hell**

The fog was the first thing Orihime Inoue saw as her eyes strained to focus. It was omnipresent, seeming to wrap around her, and so effectively obscuring all that lay beyond it that for a moment she was unable to tell whether she was laying on her back or standing on her feet. When she finally found the strength to move her arms, and in doing so noticed the soft, soggy soil beneath them, she realized that she was laying. An attempt to push herself up, however, was greeted with a throbbing in her head so intense that she immediately abandoned the effort.

"Ow, ow, ow..." She mouthed softly, rubbing the back of her head and finding a tremendous bump there. She must have fallen quite a way...

Fallen?

Realizing how fruitless it would be to attempt to move right away, she instead closed her eyes and attempted to remember the circumstances that had led her to where she was. Her mind was a little muddled from the pain, but the events slowly began to fall together. She had gone to the park in Karakura. That arrancar, Ulquiorra, had been waiting for her. The night was well set in, by then, and the only sound that could be heard was the chirping of insects. Such emptiness frightened her greatly, as it seemed to represent exactly what had just occurred in her life. She was now completely alone.

"Did you say your farewell?" Ulquiorra inquired, his voice emotionless. The memory of her fleeting farewell to a slumbering Ichigo proved too powerful for her to find her voice, but she slowly nodded her assent. In response, the arrancar began to slowly approach her. She watched him in resignation; the white of his uniform reflected the streetlights, and the intense green of his eyes illuminated almost magically, as if they belonged to a nocturnal animal.

"Then our business in this world has concluded." He said. As he spoke, a great opening appeared behind him, it pushed in and then outward, like a great mouth opening in the fabric of space. "Come."

"Yes." came her soft-voiced reply. Her eyes were turned down now, and as she followed him into the blackness they had the look of an executioner leading his convict to their inevitable death. The portal Ulquiorra created began to close as she stepped through it, though, and she couldn't resist taking one final look at the world she had agreed to leave behind forever.

How long had she followed Ulquiorra into the darkness? It couldn't have been for more than a minute or two. In the distance before him she could see the exit to the portal, and imagined that it was Hueco Mundo, the land of hollows, the place she had agreed to remain for the rest of her life. She wasn't thinking that far ahead at the time, though. All she could think about was him. How long would it take for him to notice she was gone? Would he even care? How would Chad or Ishida react? What would Rukia say?

"Ichigo..." She felt the need to say his name when she thought of Rukia, because in doing so she had accidently brought up her most painful memory. A few days before she was approached by Ulquiorra, there had been an enormous battle between the shinigami charged with protecting Karakura and a group of Aizen's arrancar. The shinigami had emerged victorious, but Rukia had been badly injured in the fight. When the time had come for Orihime to heal her injuries, Ichigo watched over them. Seeing his eyes as they looked upon Rukia's injured form hurt Orihime more than she could ever admit. She had never seen Ichigo wear such a gentle and compassionate look in all the time she had known him. Seeing it shared with Rukia shouldn't have bothered her, she was a wounded friend, of course, but it awoke the silent flamed of jealousy deep in Orihime's heart.

"If you knew what I had done on your behalf, would you have shared that expression with me, too?" Orihime asked the question out loud, blinking rapidly in an effort to ebb the flow of the tears that were beginning to form in her eyes. No. She didn't suppose he would. Was it because of Rukia that she was so ignored by him? If only he had never encountered...

It was in that instant that it had happened. The ground inside the portal, which was made up of concentrated energy, gave way beneath her feet, and she felt herself begin to fall through. Ulquiorra noticed the disturbance just as she had almost completely slipped away, but by the time he made his lunge he could only grasp the very tips of her fingers before she disappeared. Orihime screamed in fright as the only sources of light were soon far above her, and she became swallowed in the absolute darkness between dimensions.

So it was that she was here when she awoke, though she hadn't quite began the process of discovering where 'here' was, exactly. Most of the pain had subsided as she gathered her thoughts, so after another minute she felt brave enough to attempt to stand once again. This time she managed, though not without a little wobbling as she came to balance on her feet. The first little victory she needed now complete, she tried her best to survey her surroundings. The thick fog she had noticed when she first awakened was much more frightening now that she could see clearly. It had an unnatural, almost foreboding quality to it, and seemed to simultaneously be mist, fog, and smoke without actually being any of them. The fog limited her vision to only ten feet or so in any direction, so she had little choice but to begin walking.

She had landed on the grassy shoulder of a paved road. She found it as soon as she began walking, and thanked her luck that she hadn't landed a few feet to the right when she fell into this place. The sight of a road was a hopeful beacon for her, since if it was here, then someone must have built it, which meant that she wasn't alone. Maybe she had even managed to find her way back to the living world. She began to walk alongside the road, her ears perked for the sound of a car's engine. With the fog as thick as it was, her eyes were almost completely useless, so she tried shutting them as she walked to help her focus on what could be heard. For two or three minutes she walked like this, trying to put her emotional turmoil out of her mind and hoping that the feeling of dread that was now firmly rooted in the pit of her stomach would prove to be paranoia on her part.

Had it not been for the strangest occurance, she may have continued to walk in that direction for another hour or so before beginning to despair, as Orihime had always been the sort to be blindly optimistic about things. As it stand, however, in the middle of her step she had to catch her foot quickly to stop herself from losing her balance: There was no longer any ground beneath her! She opened her eyes in surprise, and looked down to see that, not only had the road abruptly ended, but the ground itself seemed to come to a complete stop. The edge was jagged and rough, as if an earthquake or something like it had caused the earth to split, and with the fog hindering her she couldn't tell how deep the chasm was.

"Well, umm... I guess I can't go this way..." She said, eager to hear a human voice, even if it was just her own. She tried her best to giggle nervously at the situation, but her fear shown through all the same, and it sounded more like a labored cough than anything. Left with no option except to continue forward, she turned around and began to follow the road in the other direction. This time around, she had a bit more luck, as within a few minutes she could see the glow of an artificial light ahead of her. For the first time since she awoke she felt hopeful, and began to sprint toward it as quickly as she could. A light could be a building, or a car's headlights. It could be anything, so long as it was connected to someone else. She was a little disappointed to find that the light was nothing but an overhead illumination for a sign. Still, progress was progress. She inspected the green-painted wood of the sign carefully. Printed in bold white letters was a simple message:

**Welcome to Silent Hill**

She recognized the characters as english letters, a language she was only basically familiar with, and yet she was able to read it perfectly without even a moment's translation.

"Silent Hill..." Orihime repeated the name to herself, and doing so doubled the knot of fear that had already been coiling in her stomach. Was she in America or England? Either way she was sure she had never been to this place, so why did it feel so familiar to her? In the end, she decided that no good could come from just staying in the middle of nowhere, and if she could find someone else she could get her bearings. Gulping dramatically, as if to swallow all her fear, she puffed out her chest, and took her first steps into the city limits of Silent Hill.


End file.
